


Six AM

by cheesemoi



Category: Heavy Rain
Genre: AU, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, origami killer - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-04-20 14:15:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14262789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheesemoi/pseuds/cheesemoi
Summary: Distraught Ethan is paid a visit by Norman Jayden, who tries to help him get back on his feet. Ethan appreciates Norman's goodheartedness, but doesn't figure what the motivation behind it could be.





	1. Chapter 1

When, after a moment, the set of knuckles rapped on the door a second time, Ethan scooped up his heavy heart from the depths of his chest and rose from the bed for the first time in days. He still wore that torn, bloodied, burned blue sweater in which he had completed the trials, or, tried to. As he walked past the bathroom, the man who glanced back at him from the mirror was someone completely unrecognizable. Swollen, dull eyes peered beyond greasy black bangs, and stubble wild and overgrown shrouded his face like a mourning veil. The bandages on his arm were rolling at the edges now, and the yellow they had been a few days ago was festering into a splotchy brown. He didn’t want to know what the ones on his chest looked like. He wasn’t going to check.

  
He walked to the front door in the low light of morning, turned grey by the clouds while the rain on the side of the house echoed and mimicked Ethan’s footsteps as he walked across the wood floor.

  
Opening the door, he braced himself for the first human interaction he’d have since he got the news.

  
“Ethan Mars?” A man’s voice said, it was softer and higher with kindness. His shoes were black and shiny and warped from the constant autumn rain. The hem of his black dress pants looked permanently mud-stained.

  
Ethan kept his eyes down. “Yeah?” The word fell out like a statement. Another journalist here to get the story on his son. Another cop here to try and get any more clues or leads to the Origami Killer. “Look,” he sighed, “I told my story to the press and the police already. If you’re looking for information, I don’t have any more to give.”

  
“I’m not here about your son, Mr. Mars, ” the man with the black shoes explained. “I’m filling in for Lieutenant Blake since he’s been suspended after accusing you of being the Origami Killer. I’m agent Norman Jayden, FBI. We’ve met before.”

  
Ethan’s eyes tracked up to the face of the man in front of him. “Oh, agent Jayden,” he iterated with sudden recognition, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise-- please, come in. It’s pouring buckets out there.”

  
“Thanks,” Jayden said with the comfortable matter-of-factness he was so keen on. Ethan held the door for him as he stepped into the hallway and hung his rain-soaked coat on one of the pegs in the hallway.

  
“Can I make you a coffee?” Ethan asked, already making his way into the kitchen. He’d been around cops more in two years than most people would in their entire lives-- from Jason, to the divorce, to now-- and still Ethan found himself buckling under his nerves when he was around one. He had just set his hands on the coffeemaker when Norman answered.  
“Oh, no, thanks, Mr. Mars. But it’s nice of you to offer.”

  
Ethan sighed tensely through his nose. The coffee maker was a common ground, an escape. Whatever Jayden was here about could be interrupted when the coffee was done. Any situation, about his son whose name hurt to badly to say anymore, or Grace, who hadn’t returned his calls since the reports came out, could be paused while Ethan got up, retrieved clean cups, and poured the coffee. The smallest break was enough to breathe away the horrors before they all got too overwhelming.  
“What are you here for, Agent Jayden, if not for more information on the Origami Killer?” he asked patiently, trying to keep a calm tone to his voice as he walked slowly back into the living room.

  
“Well it’s like I said, I’m just filling in for Blake. The investigation is closed now seeing as the rainy season is coming to an end. The killer won’t have time to take another victim with less than a week projected forecasts.” He looked to Ethan and sensed his tension in his body language and expression. His hands looked like fists in his pockets and he kept his eyes focused on nothing in particular on the floor. “I’m here,” Norman continued, slowly and with a softer tone in his voice, “because someone called the station to report that they hadn’t seen you leave the house in a few days. They hadn’t seen lights on, or any movement, or anything. They tried calling you a few times and you never picked up.” He pursed his lips briefly and his ice green eyes melted with sympathy. “They were concerned that you had killed yourself, Ethan.”

  
“Oh,” Ethan replied, wondering why the statement didn’t have more of an effect on him. Somehow it didn’t seem that surprising, or out of reach.

  
Norman hesitated, hoping that Ethan would say more. He’s thought about it, he concluded in a heartbeat, though he didn’t want it to be true. Suppressing a stutter, he probed “Is that all you have to say about it?”

  
Ethan looked over his shoulder into the kitchen. The chalkboard by the window still had his handprint on it from when he began to erase it but had stopped partway through. All that remained was spatterings of letters, still visible through the mottled black and grey. It was one of few artifacts left over from what life was like before. “Do you have any children, Agent Jayden?” he asked, turning to face him again. His brow furrowed with emotion and his lower eyelids drooped with fresh tears.

  
Norman shook his head. The verbal “no” would have dropped to his stomach like a brick.

  
“Then you couldn’t understand,” Ethan insisted, “you couldn’t possibly understand that all the light has gone out of my life.” He sniffed suddenly and pursed his lips, struggling to maintain his composure. “I appreciate everything you tried to do for me, really, I do. It wasn’t your fault I was put in that cell, and he wasn’t found in time.” His voice quavered more, then dropped to a near whisper. “I told them I was the only one who could find him. I told them I loved him. I told them I should have been a better dad.”

  
“I can’t express to you how sorry I am for Shaun’s death,” Norman said calmly and slowly took steps towards Ethan. “We did the best that we could do in such a limited time. I’m sorry we couldn’t have done more.” He put his hand out as if to place it on Ethan’s arm. Surveying more closely the burns and cuts and bruises that painted his body still, Norman let his hand fall apprehensively back to his side. “Driving into oncoming traffic, getting yourself electrocuted, having Carter try and beat a confession out of you… and all for Shaun? That’s one the most self-sacrificial, most selfless lengths a father could go for his son. Most parents would say they’d do that for their kid, but you… you did it. I still think that makes you the best dad there could be.” His ice green eyes pressed the point into Ethan’s empty blue eyes. He pursed his lips and nodded shallowly, if not to confirm the point to Ethan, than for himself. “I’m glad to see your neighbors suspected wrong of you,” he concluded, and broke their gaze to pull a business card out of his pocket. “If ever you need anything, you know who to call.”

  
He looked in his face once more before walking to the hall and lifting his cold, damp coat from the peg it hung on. Ethan stood where he left him, paralysed and wordless. It wasn’t until after the door had closed that the tears fell, slowly at first, and then washed the name on the business card to a fuzzy, muddy mess.


	2. Chapter 2

“How do you do it?” Ethan asked. Exhaustion had quelled his anxiety for now. For the first time in a long time, his knuckles weren’t white as he gripped his coffee cup. “I lay in bed, and it’s like I’m too tired to sleep. I don’t have the energy to do anything but stare at the wall, while my mind just races. I must’ve slept six hours in the past four days. How do you do it?” 

“I don’t know,” Madison said thoughtfully. “It’s been a part of my life so long, I guess I just figured out what worked for me over the years.” She paused and pensively sipped her coffee. “Have you tried going to a motel?” 

Ethan began shaking his head before she had finished her sentence. “I can’t go back there, to a place like that,” he said coldly. “It’s hard enough being with my thoughts while I’m awake. I don’t need the nightmares to be worse than they already are.” 

Madison smiled with poignant understanding. “You can't just boycott sleep, Ethan. You need to rest.”

“I’ve done a fine job so far, haven’t I?” he asked. To Madison, it seemed like he was asking for her approval as both a friend and an insomniac. He turned and watched the grey sky spit onto the world. “Six hours is better than nothing. Maybe I just need time. Processing it all.” 

“I’m glad to see you out of bed, and returning my calls,” she stated, changing the subject. “I was worried about you these past couple days. I wanted to be able to help you, like back in the motel, but…” she trailed off and watched the clouds in her coffee swell and ebb. “I didn’t want to impede on any time you needed to take, after the warehouse. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”

A familiar itch twinged in the back of Ethan’s mind. He didn’t know for certain, but impulse took over as he asked “is that why you called the cops?”

Madison twisted her mouth to the side and sighed through her nose. A cool collectiveness firmed her tender brown eyes. It was enough of an answer to send Ethan’s mind into static. 

“It was you wasn’t it?” he insisted. A fire he hadn’t felt since the trials began to overtake him. For days, he had been completely numb, like every piece of him down to his essence was coated in a thick layer of snow, muffled and frozen into dull, unfeeling stiffness. In contrast, this indignant anger was unprocessable. Neither Madison nor Ethan could predict which would be more destructive. “God, Madison, how many times are you going to try and expose this story? I can’t get through a day thinking about it. I can’t get through a  _ day _ , and you… what, you’re trying to make a quick buck? A look inside the mind of the Origami Killer’s most recent victim!” 

“Ethan--” 

“A look inside the mind of the father who risked his life five times, and for what?”

“Ethan, please--” 

“My son is  _ dead _ , Madison!” he yelled, speaking the fact out loud for the first time. His voice sounded foreign to his own ears. His jaw tightened. His lips quivered. He bit his tongue to focus on a pain more familiar and easy to bear. “That’s all anyone needs to know.” 

Madison surveyed the man that sat across from him and wondered why she no longer recognised him. She knew him when he was the fixation of the killer, toyed with and forced to jump through the hoops that had been set up for him. She knew he was the type of man who was determined to the point of self-sacrificial, if that’s what it came to. He was a father who gave the world to try and save his son. She swallowed her conclusion like a pill. He was a father, and she wondered if that was something that could ever leave a person, even after their children were gone. 

“I’m sorry,” she said so calmly it only demonstrated her professionalism. “I wasn’t after your story, and I didn’t call the cops to get it either.” She looked him square in his eyes so strongly that Ethan averted his to the coffee cup in his hands. His knuckles were white again. Madison spoke slowly and tapped her nails on the table with each word: “I meant well.”

A long silence ensued as her phrase hung in the air. The fire that had started within Ethan simmered down to embers in an itchy persistent anger that could only be self-directed. 

Madison took a long sip of her coffee. “When I met you,” she stated gently. “You were in bad shape. Broken ribs and a huge gash on your forehead, exceeding doses of pain meds. Every time I saw you, you were worse and worse off. I didn’t know how bad you were willing to let yourself become.” 

Ethan looked down at the burn holes in his sweater. “No one can help me,” he said decidedly. “Not the police, not my therapist, not even you. You’re the closest thing I have to a friend, and I’m sorry, but there’s not a lot I can trust anymore.” He checked the clock in the in the kitchen and saw that it was a little before four.  _ Almost time for Shaun’s snack _ blasted into his mind like a bullet, and his eyes shifted to the half-erased chalkboard before he could stop himself. He kept his eyes on as he said “you should go” so softly it seemed to be only to himself. Then, suddenly shaking himself out of his trance, he added, “Thanks for stopping by.” 

“Hey, anytime. I was thinking of leaving soon, anyway. I’m sure you have a lot to do before tomorrow.” 

Ethan’s eyes widened with a sharpness in them that, briefly, brought him into the reality he had distanced himself from for so long. “Tomorrow? Tomorrow’s Sunday?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed, rising from her seat and putting her jacket on. “I thought you knew.” 

Ethan put his face in his hands and exhaled heavily through his nose. Cold clamminess from his palms permeated through his overgrown scruff. “I didn’t realise…” he muttered muddy syllables through his hands. “I lost track. I lost track again.”

Madison hesitated before asking gently “are you oka--?”

“I’m fine,” Ethan answered a little too quickly. He blew a drawn out sigh and stared through his coffee cup. “I’m fine,” he iterated, this time more convincingly, and met her concerned gaze. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

“If you need any help with anything…” she offered, with no need to finish the statement. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She backed towards the door with her hands in her pockets, so as to get one last glimpse of him before she turned her back. 

The door shut with a gentle click behind her and once again, Ethan was in complete solitude. He put his face in his hands again, then slid them to the back of his neck, tugging his beard and pushing his bangs out of his face in overwhelmed exasperation. He set his forehead on the table with both hands on the nape of his neck and vocalised a groan from the very depths of his soul. “Okay,” he whispered. “Okay, okay, okay-okay-okay-okay,” he repeated to himself over and over again, thinking that maybe if he said it enough, it would be. Then, he sat up suddenly like a man possessed, and got out of his chair. By the front door, amongst the piles of unopened mail, ignored sympathy cards, junk mail, and bills, was the paper he needed. He sifted pile after pile, becoming more frantic and feverish with each item until he found it. He dialed the number and shut his eyes while it rang. It rang. 

Rang. 

Rang. 

“Agent Norman Jayden.” 

“Agent Jayden, it’s Ethan. Ethan Mars,” he clarified, trying to prevent his thoughts from getting ahead of him.

“Oh, Ethan. How are you?” his digitised voice asked, “Is everything all right?” 

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s” he searched for the word, “fine. Listen, You worked my son’s case, and you helped me escape the interrogation room when Blake was questioning me. You were trying to solve the case, and you were helping me to do the same.” He squeezed his eyes tighter and nervously drummed his fingers on his crossed arm. His voice remained calm and even as he continued, “Shaun’s...funeral is tomorrow. I would like for you to come, if you can, after everything you’ve done for us. For me.” 

“Without question,” Norman replied. “I only wish I could have done more.”

While Norman had done everything he could, and so had Ethan, it didn’t change what had happened. Ethan couldn’t bring himself to say that he had done enough. As he thought about this, he sensed his silence was becoming too long, and said “you’ll be there?” 

“I’ll be there,” he replied with reverent sincerity. 

Goodbye lingered in the air, impending over live air. Before it could come, Ethan said, “Norman?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.” 

After a brief confirmation and exchange of goodbyes, Norman set his cell phone on the desk and buried his face in his hands. A confession sat like a marble on the tip of his tongue that he wished he could just spit out.  _ Now is not the time _ , he emphasized to himself. His heart felt like a cantering horse. His breathing elevated to accommodate his racing blood. “Oh, God,” he groaned into his shaking hands, knowing his vision would be doubled and blurry when he removed them. He bit the marble at the tip of his tongue to prevent himself from saying the only thought that looped around his swimming head.  _ I can’t take this anymore. I can’t take this anymore.  _ (I’m going to pass out hovered more in the background).  _ I can’t take this anymore. I-can’t-take-this-anymore! _

He fumbled in his pockets for that little blue tube that glowed electric and saintly in his hazy wavering vision. It slipped slightly in his balmy hands as he struggled to twist the top off. Beginning to panic and uttering a tense “come on” to himself, he pulled the cap off in one final, desperate motion. He held the tube to his nose and breathed in the powder before the cap had even clattered to the floor. The chemical filled his nose, throat, and lungs. It polluted and cleared his mind, and he pressed the heel of his hand to as to not let any escape. When his eyes focused on the overhead lights, he let his hand fall over the armrest of the office chair, so the little red lipstick stain in his palm dripped silently on to the white tile. 


	3. Chapter 3

Grace had done all the planning. She stood a ways off now, dressed in matronly black, face buried in a fistful of tissues. Her mother put her arm around her, and the two held each other, a unit, isolated from the mass of mourning friends and family who stood around the open grave. Everyone came to the burial: Shaun’s friend from school, his teachers, extended family from both Grace’s Ethan’s side, the the police, the FBI, and the journalist. Ethan wished he could credit his tremors to the cold, but standing right by the grave’s edge, he sensed the crowd behind him. In his mind, the swarm of people occupied the entire plot, spilling into the streets, people pushing and fighting in the outskirts to get closer to the front, forcing themselves through to see the burial of the most recent development in their favorite Sunday morning show. All the city came to gawk, he thought, he just had to turn around and see. 

The chill of the damp air crept into his bones. He felt each joint lock, and each muscle freeze, spreading slowly and agonisingly through his body. It seized his throat last. The people were swarming. He broke the ice in his elbows and gripped his neck. Pushing, fighting, forcing. He dragged a breath in.  _ Can’t take crowds _ . He squeezed his eyes shut. Ice splintered his bones. He turned around. 

Thirty people stood behind him, almost all familiar faces. Towards the back was Madison, whose prying brown eyes permeated through the crowd and reassured him in her unspoken confident way. Along the edge of police, who held their caps in delicately folded, solemn hands, stood Norman Jayden. He folded his ARI into his pocket and Ethan saw in his expression an indescribable brokenness that until now, he had only seen in himself. Norman tipped his head down as if to survey the mud and slick that the plot had been reduced to, and slowly-- almost cautiously, as if in danger-- walked towards Ethan. Ethan turned forward again and kept his eyes fixed on the open grave, the loose damp dirt piled beside it, and the four foot coffin, the child’s coffin, that would soon be covered at the bottom of the ditch. 

“How are you holding up?” Norman asked, his voice higher with softness and sweetness as he stood by Ethan, placing his hands in the pockets of his black jacket. 

Ethan kept his eyes on the grave. “I don’t know,” he said hollowly. “I don’t  _ know _ .” He nervously fingered at the burn holes in his blue sweater. The old blood had long since browned, and the biggest scabs had since peeled reluctantly from the stitching. “I never thought I would have to do this again.” 

“Ethan, I’m so sorry--”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” his voice broke. Tears rushed to his eyes and spilled down his cheeks. He looked past the casket, a few rows down, for Jason’s headstone but his vision was too obscured to find it. “I guess we should have thought about it, burying the boys together. The children’s lot is separate from the regular one, you know. If we... I, I would have bought two spots together for them.” His words wavered in clarity and comprehensibility so by the end of his sentence, Norman struggled to catch what his final few words were. Ethan stuttered another half-sentence of babbling, then crossed one arm across his body, and brought one had up to cover his eyes. His mouth pulled into a strained frown that bore all his teeth, gritted together in paralysed pain. A sharp inhale shook his whole body, and his shoulders rose towards his ears with every quiet, vocalised sob. 

Norman placed his hand on Ethan’s shoulder and squeezed it firmly, as if to say “I’m here for you; let it out; it’s okay.” as Ethan trembled and heaved his sorrow out in short, grief-stricken breaths. It was a moment beyond words. Norman wracked his brain for something to say, but nothing seemed fitting. Nothing could match the outreach and caring that placing his hand on his shoulder demonstrated. Ethan kept his hand over his eyes and unwrapped his other arm from around his body. He let it hang at his side for a moment, then hugged around Norman’s waist, still huffing small cries through his teeth. 

Norman hesitated, but didn’t pull away. Ethan’s gesture had surprised him, after all, it was his job to protect people, not comfort them. Digging through his registers of psych knowledge for something that might help, he remembered that if someone asks to be embraced, always be the last one to let go, because you never know how long that person might need it. He returned the gesture, putting his arm around him, and letting Ethan take solace in his presence. Whatever Ethan needed him for in this moment, he would do, and he would be. 

Ethan turned his face to where his and Norman’s shoulders’ overlapped and shielded his face as he muttered, “I can’t take this. Can’t handle it. I just can’t handle it…” 

“Take it easy, it’s gonna be alright,” Norman cooed. 

“I miss him,” he cried, grasping at the hem of Norman’s coat like he was trying to wring the water from it. Something to keep in the palm of his hand, to hold on to. 

“I know,” Norman whispered, as Ethan’s contagious grief radiated from his touch. 

“He didn’t deserve this.” He tugged on his coat. Coldness tainted his voice and his fussing waxed more aggravated. “He never did anything wrong.  _ I’m _ the one at fault here. It should have been me.” 

Norman looked towards Ethan’s face hidden behind his hand. “Ethan,” he said delicately, “don’t talk like that.”

“He was just a kid. I should have died in the car crash, or the electric building, or the firefight with the drug dealer. Shaun never had any say in this. It should have been me.” He pulled more forcefully at the jacket, trying to find something that only he knew was there. 

It may have been what Ethan was saying, or the sense of paranoia that the FBI had instilled in him, but a suspicious feeling crept up the back of Norman’s neck and set him on guard. “Stop it, Ethan, what are you--?”

“You understand, Agent Jayden. I’m the one that should have died,” Ethan said with an eerie calm washing his voice, as his hand found what he was looking for, and lifted the gun from the concealed holster. 

He pushed Norman back and away from him and dashed towards the open grave. Norman staggered backwards on the muddy surface and when he had regained his balance, looked up to see Ethan standing in the foot of Shaun’s grave, the barrel of the gun pressed decidedly to his head. Ethan squeezed his eyes shut and wiped his eyes with the hand that held the gun, cocked it, and replaced it to his temple. 

“I’m sorry!” He screamed across the collection of friends family and loved ones, shattering in front of an audience. “I’m sorry, I can’t take it anymore!” 

Audible gasps and a few screams erupted from the people gathered around. They stood paralysed so as to not get caught in the collateral of what would happen next. Norman pushed his way to the front of the crowd again, and held his hands up, displaying his palms in a subliminal gesture to prove he wasn’t a threat. “Wait a minute, Ethan,” he called over persistent sorrowful cries, “Wait just a minute. Don’t do this. Let’s be rational here, okay?” 

Ethan opened his misty eyes and looked to Grace with a contorted expression that reflected only a fraction of the perdition that tormented him. “Grace, I’m sorry. I wish I had been a better husband to you. I’ve always loved you and I always will, and I’ll be sure to tell our boys the same thing.” 

Grace’s eyes were wide and terrified and she whispered quiet utterances to herself. Reading her lips, she silently mouthed the words “no, oh, no, no, not you too.” 

“Ethan, listen to my voice. Focus only on my voice,” Norman pressed, taking slow and even steps towards him. He glanced over his shoulder at the other police who had attended and saw them creeping up through the crowd, ready to draw. He folded three fingers down towards his palm delicately until he could see them stand down.  _ No use overwhelming him-- might just make things messier.  _ “Stay calm, it’s gonna be okay, but you have to put the gun down first.” 

Ethan twisted the barrel tighter into brain, muttering breathy apologies and reasonings. “I can’t, I can’t.” 

“I’m here to help. We’re all here to help. Stay with us. You’re stronger than this, Ethan. You made it through the trials--

“That’s when Shaun was alive. I had something to live for.”

Norman swallowed nervously and persisted, “you can deal with this grief. We’re all here for you. Put the gun down, and this will all be over.”

“This will all be over,” he iterated, and tightened his finger on the trigger. 

“Take it easy,” his voice softened as the gap between them closed painstakingly inch by inch. “You risked your life to try and save him. I did, too. You don’t have to prove yourself anymore, Ethan. Killing yourself won’t bring him back.” 

“I know this won’t bring him back,” he reasoned. “But I’ve driven five miles into traffic for him, electrocuted myself for him, cut off one of my fingers for  _ him _ , killed someone  _ for him _ .” He exhaled a shaky breath as each memory flashed viscerally though his mind. “Doing this won’t bring him back, but it  _ will _ let me see him again. It  _ will. _ ” 

Grace keeled over, reduced to violent sobs, before screaming out, “Ethan, stop it! Stop it!” and the sound of jawlines rubbing against collars swelled in the crowd as everyone turned their attention. “Why didn’t you come and talk to me? You didn’t have to do all of those things all on your own. I know we’re not what we used to be, but, God, he was my son, too!” she shook her head and said quietly to herself, “Who have you become? He was my son, too.” 

“Grace,” Ethan breathed. 

“Ethan, no!” Norman screamed, madly reaching out in an attempt to disarm him.

The gun sounded off, echoed by the screams that erupted from the crowd. Ethan fell backwards into the grave, knowing nothing but blackness. 


	4. Chapter 4

Norman sat in a chair by the window, his jaw resting on the heel of his hand so the knuckles pushed his cheek up into his eye. He closed his burning eyes slowly and waited for the stinging to subside, and the changing light danced red and pink, yellow and purple through his eyelids. The wind grumbled against the glass beside him, ebbing and swelling, and occasionally meritting a chilling, high pitched whistle. A moment of silence covered the room like a blanket that muffled the footsteps and gentle beeps that carried through the hall. The sounds faded out unnoticeably until Norman’s head dropped towards chest and, surprised, he lifted it just as quickly as it had fallen. 

The white tile and white walls of the room dimmed to dark blues and greys in the overcast light from the window. The fluorescent lights buzzed imperceptibly above like a message that was there but not meant to be heard. The only things occupying the space within the sterile, impersonal, white room were the chair, the bed, a stand, and the two men. The rest was left to open air, dry, cool, smelling of isopropyl and old flowers. 

Norman stood up and paced quietly to the bedside, observing the patient who lay in an involuntary sleep. Fresh bandages wrapped his forearms and chest, white and taut and glowing under the artificial light. Other superficial cuts had been disinfected and plagued his body with the twinge of healing, replacing the burn of angry wounds. Plum bruises were beginning to fade into sickly, organic yellows and greens. One raised, dime-sized, blue ring swelled tenderly on his temple, accented by a slivered red crescent. How hard he must have been pressing, Norman considered, to have cut himself on the barrel of the gun. 

A sharp inhale, and then, “no hospital” came as a murmur from the bed. The body within tossed once, then stirred slowly, suffering the pains of reanimation. “I don’t want a hospital.”

Norman put a hand on his hip and blew a sigh off to the side. “Thank God,” he said, “I was starting to think you would never wake up.” 

Ethan groaned and rolled onto his back, looking at Norman with only embers in his eyes. “That’s what I was going for,” he stated as he achingly brought himself to a sitting position. He investigated his damage, laying a finger to his temple, wincing, and pulling it quickly away. “You seemed to have stopped me from that. I heard the gun go off and--” he cut himself off and looked frantically up at Normal with wide, terrified eyes. “If I didn’t take the bullet, who did? Tell me I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t kill anyone, did I?” 

“No, everything’s okay,” he explained calmly. “Your finger was on the trigger when I grabbed the gun from you, so I disarmed you in a way that pointed the gun upwards. Once I got it from you, I knocked you out to eliminate the threat.”

The fear on Ethan’s face melted away slowly, and his expressive, spaced-out features came back to neutral, then twisted into confusion. “‘Eliminate the threat?’” he iterated. “Wasn’t the threat eliminated after you had disarmed me?” 

A cold sweat prickled across Norman’s forehead. “I’m used to working intense cases,” he explained, resignedly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to do anything drastic.” He stopped himself there, not wanting to plant any ideas, and a hollow silence stretched between the seconds. 

Ethan put a hand to the back of his head, offering no gesture of forgiveness or thanks. His head swam and pulsed with pain as if that was all his heart could pump throughout his body anymore. He rubbed the back of his head and considered the vessel he was still occupying. A part of him felt like he had succeeded. The null and void that filled him mocked him in the irrefutable fact that he had nothing left. He couldn’t even make it through his own son’s funeral.  _ Selfish _ , the word lashed at him, cracking like a whip in his head. 

“Agent Jayden,” he spoke almost automatically, like a man possessed by some other and more distant entity. He looked him firmly in the eyes as he said, “Respectfully,” he chose his words carefully, “you don’t get to choose who lives and who dies.” 

“Respectfully, Ethan” Norman replied with a low, defensive tone that sucked the air from the room. “I do. And that’s a call I have to make with every assignment I accept.” His hands began to shake now, and he slid them into his pockets before the tremors escalated. “It’s a call I’ve made more times than I care to confess.” His eye contact faltered as he blinked spots from his vision. His heart pounded heavily, tripping and lurching with every beat, and sounding off loudly in his ears where there would otherwise be a reverent and unnerving silence. He didn’t hear the wind grumble its testimony, or a gurney being pushed swiftly past the door. 

“Anyway,” Norman swallowed dryly, “you were out for around five hours. I told the doctors you had been doing renovations to explain the cuts and the burns and the head trauma. They didn’t find anything on the MRI, and said you could be discharged whenever you regained consciousness.” 

“Good,” Ethan said with relief sweeping his voice, “I want to get out of here.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed and placed his feet on the cold tile floor, pausing to fight off the static that creeped into the edge of his vision until all was washed to black. It receded as quickly as it had come. He felt that his eyes had glassed over, and he shook his head quickly and shallowly to dispel these foreign feelings. A black mass shifted in his peripheral. Norman stepped forward and offered him his jacket. 

“Come on,” he said, “I’ll drive you home.” 

Ethan stood up slowly, and stiffly put his jacket on. He eyed Norman as the younger man leaned against the wall and covered his eyes with one hand, pinching his nose as if he could squeeze a headache out by force. With his eyes closed, he slid a few inches against the wall, and then staggered to try and catch his shifting, woozy balance. 

“Hey,” Ethan asked hesitantly, taking steps toward him. “Are you all right?” 

Norman feared that if he opened his mouth, his lurching heart would leap onto the floor. “One second,” he managed, breathily. “It’ll pass.” 

“I can call a nurse,” Ethan suggested. “They could check it out, in case it’s something serious.”

“No, it’s fine,” Norman insisted, securing the tube of trypto in his pocketed hands. “I just need to wash my face.” He looked to Ethan who continued to survey him with a worried, suspicious, conflicted look on his face. Norman’s paranoia mounted in one sudden and overwhelming burst. “Can we go?” he pressed, “please?” 

“Yeah,” Ethan concurred, zipping up his jacket. “Yeah, I’m ready when you are.” 

They walked into the hallway, both conscious of the prying eyes of the staff and patients alike. Ethan took a slow breath.  _ I’m not wanted by the police anymore, _ he reminded himself, taking solace in the fact that the police had directed their search for the killer elsewhere. He met eyes with a nurse that breezed past them in the hall. She passed them with no light of recognition on her face, without the slightest change of expression.  _ See? _ He assured himself,  _ nothing to worry about _ . He continued forward with the tense suspicion that his comfortable assumption would be proven wrong. 

Norman’s feeble voice broke his thoughts with a barely audible “Ethan,” spoken under a shallow and anxious pant. “Ethan, I feel like I’m going to pass out.” 

Instinctively, Ethan put his arm around him and helped to support his weight. His head pounded and his body ached, but the sense of purpose that filled him smothered the pain. “Hang in there,” he said, “we’re almost to the parking lot.” 

The hallway stretched on endlessly and tractionless as each step they took together brought them no closer to the end. The fluorescent lights buzzed more aggressively now. That was it, Norman decided, they had been trying to warn him. He tried to still his shaking hands and blot the cold sweat from his brow casually, but the paranoia and the pointed eyes of the hospital staff made the very thought feel incriminating. He pulled his shoulders back, forcing himself into a stiff and rigid composure. The last time he needed a fix this badly, he fought a man twice his size and won, he assured himself nervously, so certainly he could walk out of the hospital without being confronted, or having his habit exposed, or getting treatment, or being forced to turn in his gun and his badge. The man entrance slowly drew closer with each gruelling step. The receptionist and all the patients waiting for triage could bear witness to his downfall. He needed a cover, and pushing through the thick, foggy clouds in his mind, he had to think of one quickly. 

He felt around his waist with one hand, navigating pockets. He passed his badge, his gun, the ARI, the trypto. The ARI might cover his expression, but his composure would give too much away. Moving to check other pockets, his hand brushed against Ethan’s watch. 

“Ethan,” he mumbled frantically, knowing then exactly what he needed. “Give me your other hand.” 

“Why?” he asked, doing as he was told. “Are you going to be able make it?” 

“I have to,” he replied. He folded Ethan’s thumb in towards his little finger, and pulled on the stiff strip of plastic that hung on his wrist. “If I’m seen like this, I could lose everything. Bear with me here, and follow my lead.” With on final tug, the hospital band slid over Ethan’s knuckles and off his fingers. Norman fought for control over his shaking hands and wriggled the band onto his wrist. He replaced his hands in his pockets just a few paces before crossing the threshold into the main lobby. 

“Norman, this is crazy,” Ethan said between his teeth as the two of them approached the desk. 

“It’ll be fine,” Norman insisted, taking a slow breath like he was pulling water into his lungs. The receptionist turned to look at them, taking a pen in her hand without changing her expression. “It’ll be fine,” he mouthed again, this time only to himself. 

“Checking out?” the receptionist asked, only presuming so by the direction they came from. 

Ethan and Norman exchanged a glance, nonverbally asking each other who should speak. “Yeah,” Ethan said with one twitch in his brow, then turned back to the receptionist. “We’re ready.” 

“Could I see the hospital band?” 

Norman presented it to her, and she glanced at it between bouts of typing the information into the computer. He focused all his energy into keeping his hand still, laying his elbow on the desk and keeping it pinned with his weight. “Is this going to take long?” he inquired, succeeding in keeping the anxiety out of his voice. 

“Not at all, just a few forms,” she replied sweetly. 

“Ethan,” Ethan said, ignoring the absurdity of it. “If you want to wait in the car, you could sign your signature now, and I can fill out the rest.” He turned to the receptionist and hoped with every fiber in his being that it would work. “Is that okay?” 

She looked at them curiously, before turning to Norman and asking “Are you unable to fill out the paperwork yourself?” 

“I came around not too long ago. I’m still dizzy and not quite thinking straight. It’s better if he does it,” Norman improvised. “Where do I have to sign?” 

The receptionist made x’s on two pieces of paper that she then passed to Norman, who promptly scribbled “E” followed by one short, wavy line. 

“I’ll meet you in the car,” Norman concurred, dismissing himself. He dug in his pants pocket, and handed Ethan his wallet. “This should have everything you need.” 

The receptionist smiled a goodbye “Have a good day, Mr. Mars,” she called as Norman walked towards the door. He waved briefly without turning around, then he was gone. 

Ethan sighed to himself, and crossed the nonexistent “t” in Norman’s attempted signature, fixing it up as best as he could. He pocketed Norman’s wallet and pulled out his own, copying the information longhand onto the paper before him. 

“It’s funny,” the receptionist said thoughtfully, breaking the focused silence. “He looked so different on TV.” 

Ethan’s pen stopped with his heart, and looked to the door that Norman had just gone out. “You think so?” he probed, leaving her to interpret the question however she saw fit. 

“Some photos can make a person look very different from how they look in real life,” she thought aloud. “The photo that the news showed, well,” she chucked to herself, “you look more like Ethan Mars than he does.” 

Ethan laughed nervously and feverishly began to fill the papers out. His voice pitched higher in his discomfort, said again, “you think so?” Then he coughed and stuttered, “I never-- I guess I never thought about it. No one has ever said that to me before.”  He slid the papers towards her and put the pen back in the jar. “Have a good day,” he resigned, already backing away from the desk. 

“Not yet,” she sang, and filtered through a filing cabinet. Ethan crossed his arms and looked around the room, trying to find anything to project his anxiety onto. Desperately itching to leave, he repressed any instinct to squirm in place as the receptionist looked through her files one by one by one. “Your discharge papers,” she announced finally. “And you’re all set. Have a good day.” 

“Thanks, you too.” Ethan said quickly, taking the papers into his hand and walking swiftly with a purpose out to the parking lot. He braced himself against the brisk autumn winds and scouted the parking lot for Norman, who wasn’t anywhere to be seen. No traffic passed through the roundabout outside of the hospital’s main entrance. Only one car stood in the drive, a black, boxy coupé with its hazards on. Ethan approached it warily, figuring it to look like the type of car an FBI agent would have. Peering in the window, he saw Norman sitting in the driver’s seat, drumming his fingers absentmindedly on the steering wheel. Ethan opened the car door with a gentle pop, like a gas stove igniting, and sat in the passenger’s seat, tossing the discharge papers neglectfully onto the dash. 

“Are we good to go?” Norman asked. 

“Yeah,” Ethan sighed heavily and leaned his forehead against the window. He shut his eyes to the natural light and felt the pulse in his bruised temple push against the resistance of the glass. The cold surface sapped some pain from his head, and he kept it there until the push of his blood became easier and gentler. He looked at Norman from the corner of his eye and noticed how calm he was, and that the color had come back to his face. “Are you okay to drive?” 

“Yeah, like I said, it passes after a few minutes,” Norman explained, brushing powder blue teardrops from his lapel. It fell from his fingertips and glittered in the dim light, hanging dreamily in the air for a moment, before sinking between the seats. 

“Good,” Ethan said absently, watching the last of the flotsam slip away. A smile threatened his face which he tried to twist back. “That’s good,” he said again, only his smile was audible now, infringing on the formerly serious air. 

“What papers did she give you?” He asked, shifting the gear and driving forward. 

Ethan reached and lifted them off the dash. “Oh, I haven’t read them yet. It’s, uh,” he skimmed one page after the other and repressed his smile with the back of his hand. “It’s,” the word came out in a chuckle, and there was no going back. “It’s the aftercare for head trauma,” he laughed, setting the papers on his lap and resigning to the irrepressible fit that bubbled up within him. 

Norman listened to him and waited to respond, trying to think of something Ethan knew that he didn’t. He knew that laughter was a form of panic, but considered the greatest stress to be over with. “I don't…” he said slowly, “I don’t understand. What’s so funny about that?” 

“They call  _ this _ head trauma?” He laughed, incredulous at the suggestion. “I got hit by a car and got a concussion so bad, I was in a coma for sixth months,” he sighed through a smile as the memory tamped his laughter down. He hummed “Oh, things have been so much worse,” before his laughter crescendoed again. “We acted like it was the end of the world back there. All we did was sign some paperwork!” 

“Yeah,” Norman agreed hollowly, wondering if he had hit Ethan harder than he originally intended. “Things have definitely been worse.” 

They drove along the city streets in silence, only broken by Ethan’s occasional chuckling and muttering.  _ Let him laugh _ , Norman thought to himself, dismissing the display of lunatic joy, and knowing the feeling of those impulses that billowed and rose like untamable fire. They consumed everything that got too close, unable to be doused or smothered. The only way to satisfy it, was to let it burn out. 

_ Let him laugh _ , he concluded.  _ Things have been worse. _


	5. Chapter 5

FIVE

Autumn persisted. Torrents fell upon the city like muddy piano flourishes that swept the streets with depressing melancholia. It soaked everything, creating sinkholes in the roads of the city and the hearts of the citizens alike. The rain pounded bony knuckles across every roof, wall, and window, unrelenting and aggressive. The precipitation was invisible under the shroud of distinctive early morning darkness, but the lights from the buildings refracted droplets of sparkling lemon oil that spattered across the large windows like a Jackson Pollock painting. 

Madison sat on her couch and flipped mindlessly through the eclectic spread of magazines before her on the coffee table. The bright, shifting images from the television glazed the open floor apartment with swaths of blue and yellow light, consistent enough to see by. The rain on the windows drowned out the footsteps in her mind. A cup of tepid tea left a watery ring on the cover of one of the magazines. She had made it hours ago, but still sipped it thoughtfully as she turned pages and occasionally glanced up at the screen. Opinions and commercials. Rerun stories. Nothing remotely interesting would come on until the sun backlit the sheets of clouds, making all the world feel as if it was anticipating some grand scale shadow puppet show. 

She glanced over to her desk, eyeing her computer which slept soundly along with the rest of the world. Her black book full of notes yawned its open pages, lolling lazily in the cool draft that wafted in from the nearby window. A story sat patiently inside, waiting to be written, beckoning to her to come and work. 

She stood and stretched, taking her time walking across the spacious open floor, silently with bare feet. They couldn’t hear her when she walked with bare feet, she tried to convince herself, and fought back the prickling feeling at the back of her neck. Memories reached out from the unlit corners of the room with threatening, crooked fingers, but memories can only do so much damage. She was home, and autumn persisted. 

She took her place at her desk and glanced impulsively over both shoulders, sweeping the room one last time, checking those dark corners and staring into them until they blinked first. All clear, she breathed. Home. The word seemed to weigh less each time it crossed her mind. Warily, she turned back to her computer and settled into her work. She jostled the mouse succinctly and the most recent document lit up suddenly, glowing blue and white: 

“The Ninth Victim” by Madison Paige 

The black bar after her name blinked patiently. She reviewed her notes and resumed, thoughtfully. 

_ Shaun Mars, the ninth victim of the Origami Killer, was laid to rest this Sunday in the city cemetery. His father, Ethan Mars, has been acquitted of the accusations that he was the Origami Killer. Mr. Mars had been grieving the loss of his son for about a week before the body was found early Saturday morning, around six a.m.  _

She paused, looked around her again, and gazed distantly at her black notebook, whose splayed pages waved playfully at her, like a child asking for attention. 

_ Ethan and Grace had divorced in spring of this year. The arrangement was amicable and each parent spent equal time with their child. Both Ethan and Grace reported no tension in the relationship with their son. Shaun Mars had gone to his father’s care just one day before his disappearance. He was ten years old at the time of the murder. _

_ The body was found a little over one week before the funeral. Both parents had been liaison to the police and knew the killer’s modus operandi. Rainfall was up to six inches by friday night, and so both knew to expect that the body would turn up on a wasteland, with an origami figure in his hand, and an orchid on his chest. “We had planned to bury an empty casket, if his body wasn’t found in time” Shaun’s mother, Grace, told the press. “We just needed the closure. It’s all been so much to bear.”  _

With each word she wrote she felt an evil drawing nearer and nearer. Her paranoia mounted. Footsteps pattered behind her on the apartment floor with government issued boots. Their knives were drawn and stained. Her breath caught in her throat. Stiff fingers typed anxious messy misspellings into the computer. They’re not real, she thought, between tactical footfalls, they can’t hurt you.

_ Agent Norman Jayden from the FBI was the first one on the scene that morning after an anonymous caller reported the discovery of the body. Jayden has been involved with the case since the disappearance of Shaun Mars in hopes that his background in criminal psychology and behavior analysis could shed some new light on possible suspects as to who the Origami Killer could be. Since Lieutenant Carter Blake was suspended from the force after his controversial actions in the case, Agent Jayden has substituted in his place for the time being, as has agreed to continue the investigation until Lieutenant Blake is ready to rejoin. The Origami killer is still at ;arhe-- _

She jumped suddenly as a fierce volley of raindrops smattered the window and the glass warbled under the forceful winds funneled in by the city buildings. She instinctively looked over her shoulder and held her gaze on the window, expecting to see night-shrouded faces grimacing back at her. Her eyes swept the blackened glass and detected no one, not the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth scan revealed anything. She was completely alone, at home, in persistent autumn. The intruders that her mind actively and frequently conjured up weren’t coming to change that. They were not real.  Memories can only hurt so much. 

She deleted her last sentence and rewrote:  _ The Origami Killer is still at large. Police have come forward to mention that the victims are between nine and twelve years old, and tend to disappear in crowded places. The killer is suspected to be a male in his thirties or forties. Police officers ask that parents stay in close communication with their children as the rainy season comes to an end, especially if school closure is expected due to storms. They continue to request anyone who has information on the Origami Killer to come forward, as any detail may help form a lead in the investigation.   _

The evil feeling swelled. She expected a hand on her shoulder, already feeling the cold steel biting and warming against her throat. It was as if the killers’ presence had manifested itself in every shadow of the dark room. He was standing behind her. He was crouching in the corner. He was pressed against the wall. He was creeping towards the desk. They were everywhere and they were nowhere, ambushing her not physically but mentally. 

She turned to face the open, empty room with its stagnant shadows lightening and deepening according to the television. The same announcers were telling the same stories from the day. Robbery here, Kramer family there, it was nothing out of the ordinary. But then, in the defamiliarized hours of the morning, she distanced herself from the same old ordinary stories, and looked upon the face of the robber whose beady desperate eyes glared hollowly into hers, assessed the video of Mr. Kramer shaking hands with the cops, who were smiling so fully they must have been bought out, and considered all the corrupt and criminal things that happen when people get desperate enough. A photo of Brad Silver flashed on the screen, who’s murderer had never been found, followed by the footage of Sarah and Cindy being escorted by police to their new orphanage. 

The intruders were quieter now as Madison looked across the room to the television. They knew that it was a kill-or-be-killed world, that time was sensitive, and that timing was a skill. She felt a calm peculiarity settle the most tumultuous parts of her. How desperate she was to stay awake so the nightmares of those men wouldn’t torment her. The crazy things she’d tried when she was desperate to sleep, before she knew what worked. They were memories, so they could hurt only so much. They were only real to her. And yet, the things she’d done for a part of her life that was dead and gone had consumed her and changed her until she hardly recognised herself. She thought about Ethan and his reaction to the funeral. She wondered what kind of situation creates a man capable of drowning nine boys. For a moment, she saw everyone in the world as a conglomeration of old ghosts, tucked inside one another like russian nesting dolls. They spoke to their hosts and fuelled their every action. The only way to exorcise them was to satisfy them, no matter the cost.

She opened her small black notebook and pressed her pen to her lips. A venture began to form in her mind. She wrote in regards to herself, and to those intruders. To Ethan, to the Origami Killer. To no one. To everyone. 

_ Even the best people act on desperation, and it creates as many offenders as it does victims.  _


	6. Chapter 6

“It looks good,” Ethan commented distantly, rubbing one finger over the glossy words, feeling the divots and valleys in the notebook from Madison’s handwriting as if he could read them like braille. The journal splayed its pages on the seat beside him while he held the printed article tensely with one hand. Information that he knew so intimately now seemed unfamiliar, having been written in a foreign hand and stripped of all the emotional gravity. He looked at the Ethan Mars pictured in the article from a space that was outside himself and couldn't recognise the grainy black and white face that stared unblinking back at him, despite that the photo was only a few days old. Purpose and determination was locked in his expression as the police had cuffed and questioned him. He glanced over the printed words and rubbed at the handwritten pages absentmindedly. 

“If it’s too upsetting to read, you don’t have to,” Madison observed, watching his nervous habits follow each other like clockwork. First the fidgeting, then touching his face. He’d roll the corners of her notebook before pacing the room after a while, if she let him read and reread for too long. 

“I’m not upset,” Ethan said so calmly Madison almost believed him. “I’m just… thinking.” His eyes scanned the page again, stopping at the photo, the title, the last few sentences. Madison could map out the article by the way his eyes darted across the paper. The photo. Ninth Victim. Shaun Mars. Form a lead. His gaze switched between these four pieces of information, whether nostalgically or incredulously, she couldn’t tell. Maybe a part of him wished he could do it all again. Feel that fire and that determination in hopes that maybe, in some other timeline, he would be sitting here with her in her apartment reading “The Ninth Victim: Shaun Mars Saved!” 

“You left out my suicide attempt,” he said levelly, breaking both their thoughts. 

“I thought about it,” she replied. “I wanted this one to be about Shaun. Not to mention I don’t think paparazzi have any place at a funeral. Not everyone deserves to know everything, you know.” 

A thoughtful silence followed. His eyes remained unfocused and static on the page, processing her spoken words instead of the written ones. “Thank you,” he said softly, and smoothed the scruff on his cheeks before his eyes scanned the page again. The photo. Ninth Victim. Shaun Mars. Form a lead. 

Madison let him take his time, scavenging for any piece of closure he could find from the article. He deserved to know every side, to fill in every gap, so when he stayed up at night thinking about what more could have been done, and what he was missing, he didn’t fill those gaps with his own invention. She considered that she could be fuelling an obsession that he should be trying to move on from, but didn’t follow the thought for long. Those empty spaces that remained within him were platforms for self-blame and loathing, and any answer she could provide would help to end that. 

Ethan knew he was missing pieces. The blackouts, visions, and possible schizophrenia had skewed his trust in his own memory, and he trusted few others besides himself. Only Madison and Agent Jayden had been reliable in trying to find Shaun’s location just as much as he was. He scanned down to the paragraphs about Jayden and read and reread and reread for anything that might have saved his son, if only he knew. 

_ Agent Norman Jayden from the FBI was the first one on the scene that morning… _

Ethan knit his brow and reread the first paragraph.

_...the body was found early Saturday morning, around six a.m.  _

“Six a.m.” he iterated to himself, speaking the thought more to the article in front of him than anyone else. “That was less than two hours before he came by the house.” He turned to Madison and asked, “why wouldn’t he have told me that he had just found Shaun’s body?”

Madison shrugged, trying to find any suggestion that might fill the charged  silence “Legalities? I don’t know if they can say anything before they make a formal report. Maybe forensics had to look over it first, before contacting you or Grace for identification.”

“Or they were too busy checking in to see if I had killed myself,” Ethan quipped under his breath and between his teeth. Then the crease in his brow deepened as an inkling of suspicion swept him. “What time did you call in?”

“Call what in?”

“Saturday morning,” Ethan explained rapidly, “when Jayden showed up at my door. You called it in. What time?” 

Madison looked to the ceiling and blew a thoughtful sigh through loose lips, trying to remember back with practised, journalistic accuracy. “I want to say seven,” she decided. “Yeah, the receptionist...Charlene, I think. Well, she said that he wasn’t in the office at that time but she’d let him know. Why, what time did he come by?”

“Seven-thirty,” Ethan said stonily. “I mean, I’m doing the math here, right? The wasteland must be only twenty minutes away from the police station. Anonymous finds the body at six, Jayden’s there by six-twenty. I only live ten minutes from the station, so that leaves Jayden forty minutes to investigate the crime scene. Anonymous might have been there. All the clues would have been fresh enough.” His eyes refocused from the mental map in front of him to Madison, who listened patiently. His eyes narrowed. “Is forty minutes enough time to find something incriminating?” 

Madison shrugged and laughed lightly, “I’m a journalist, Ethan, not a cop. I don’t know what to tell you.” 

“Yeah,” Ethan concurred, sitting back in his seat and knitting his brow to solitary inward contemplation. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” 

“Try not to make something out of nothing, here,” she said patiently. “Yes, it’s possible that the anonymous person could be the Origami Killer calling in his own crime. It’s  _ possible _ , Ethan, but we don’t  _ know _ . I’m sure Jayden went through all the formalities and let you and Grace know Sunday morning once everything had been processed.”

“Why wouldn't he tell me he had just found the body?” Ethan iterated, too wrapped up in thought to listen to what she had said. “We were planning on burying an empty casket.”

“He’s a professional,” Madison rephrased shortly. “Don’t you trust him?”

“I don’t know,” Ethan said quietly to dismiss the presumption he had tried to run with. “Of course I do. I just-- I just want answers.”

“What will you do with them?” She probed, wondering if Ethan was the type of man who could live and let die. Memories can only hurt so much.

Ethan only looked wistfully at the article, and said nothing. The photo. Ninth Victim. Shaun Mars. Form a lead. His brain felt cluttered with visions and dreams. The real information mixed with the unreal so seamlessly, he couldn’t tell which was which anymore. The verisimilitude of the blackout’s dreams and the waking visions skewed his perception of reality just enough that he lived in constant uncertainty. He had to be sure he was in Madison’s apartment and felt her handwriting like braille. He had to be sure he remembered her article without adding or forgetting anything, so he read and reread it. He thought about Madison’s question, but his silence was only one more answer he didn’t have. 

Madison held her thumbs and forefingers in the shape of an L and placed them together so they made a rectangle. She closed one eye and centered Ethan in the frame of her fingers. “Ethan Mars!” she exclaimed excitedly. “You just caught the Origami Killer, what are you going to do with him?” 

Ethan turned and looked stoically into Madison’s one open eye. “Well, I’ve killed a man before,” he stated, wreathed in the white halo of her hands. “I had no choice. He put me through hell just for Shaun to die anyway. When I come face-to-face with him -- and I will -- I hope he understands that anything I do to him, I learned from him.” 

Madison lowered her hands with an acutely sick feeling in her heart. Ethan looked down, scoured the article, and quickly rolled the corners of her journal back with his thumb in short, rapid gestures. His eyes stayed static on the top left of the page, where that grainy photo grimaced back, unchanging. 


	7. Chapter 7

Norman stood in the center of his room with a vodka on his desk and a red velvet jacket in one hand. His barman had given it to him after his last dose of trypto and he let the fabric spill between his fingers and onto the floor, warm and soft. He had been standing there for about half an hour feeling nothing-- except focused-- and searching through ARI for any evidence of the killer that might be even the slightest bit incriminating. The origami paper and the zone of found victims were all too vague, with too little information to narrow down the list of suspects to something feasible. Nothing could form a lead, no locations, no dropped receipts, no pattern, nothing that could reveal who he was or how he managed to pull it off.

  
“Great,” he sighed to himself as he closed ARI and all the clues it held. “That’s just perfect.” The killer was close, basking in the pride of a fresh kill, but hadn’t let any element of his murder slip through the cracks, lest the smallest detail give him away. Nine victims in, he was more professional and comfortable in this hobby than to let some lynchpin detail expose him. Maybe the next victim will provide more clues, everyone at the police station suggested. They’d said that since the third victim was found. Norman was certain it would never happen.

  
He set his ARI in his jacket pocket and went to go wash his face in the bathroom. He set the palms of his hands on the edge of the sink and looked at his reflection in the mirror with laser beam eyes, half closed and blood-glazed. “Be careful not to overindulge in a certain you-know-what,” the voice of the bartender spoke through his lips. He watched the movement frame by frame, slowly slurring in the mirror. “It can be dangerous,” he smiled dreamily as a fresh stream of blood sprung from his nose and coated his teeth. “It can be lethal.”

  
He chuckled to himself quietly and ran the cold water until it spilled over his cupped hands. He splashed his face so the clear water that pooled in the bottom of the sink swirled with waves of pink, mingling, circling the drain, and then slipping away through the small silver grate. The water washed off one of his faces and painted another one on. He continued to bring his hands up to his face and anoint himself, watching the red become pink become clear. Usually one or two handfuls was enough, and he felt the coolness of the water sink deeper into his skin with the eighth, ninth, tenth splash. An inkling in the back of his mind said again “it can be dangerous.” The better part of him insisted he had overdone it, looping in a cycle that matched its rhythm to this ritual. There was little he could do about that, now.

  
He dried his face on a towel and looked in the mirror once more, checking to see if he has burst a seam somewhere, or if he had a loose string out that would catch on something and undo him. Looking strung out might give people a chance to see through his threadbare guise, and he couldn't afford anyone to know this little secret. They’d make him change, say that this was consuming him, or that he was becoming as schizophrenic as Ethan Mars was. He blotted the last viscous drops of blood that had coagulated in the lines and angles of his face and concluded that nothing would give him away. Everything was more or less intact, from the part in his hair to the scar on his cheek. No one would suspect a thing.

  
He slid on his jacket and walked out into the cold city streets. A biting, damp wind swept between the buildings as early November still yawned open. The fresh coolness in the air helped to clear some of the haze from his mind. With each step that he took between the seams and cracks in the pavement, he regained pieces of himself that had laid dormant since that morning. He walked the city aimlessly, having set out only to clear his head. He passed the park where Shaun Mars has disappeared, Carnaby, parking garages and apartment buildings. The air felt cleaner as he passed each landmark of the Origami Killer that had been documented in ARI. The flower shop, the paper store, the train tracks; each location glowed as a little blue dot on the map in his head. He passed one after the other, knowing no trace of the killer remained in any of them. Anything he hadn’t taken care of himself was cleaned up by the police in their investigation, and it was all only the things he wanted them to find. He followed the trail markers that he was so familiar with to the only location in the city he could find peace. Washington had its cherry blossoms that brought something fresh and sweet to the city which was as polluted as any other. Here, the river hugged along the eastern border of roads and highways, and opened the air to a liberated breeze, neither confined by the buildings nor tainted yet by the smells of the city. Garbage, cigarettes, exhaust faded from the pungent air as he drew nearer, rats, worms, communal sweat and grease smeared on subway seats. All was forgotten.

  
He dabbed under his nose with the back of his hand and it came away with two speckled red smudges. It was less than he had expected, and he reached in his pocket for something to clean it off with. He felt a receipt, coin change, the trypto, and a napkin. He used the napkin, pressing it to his tongue before rubbing the two little stains from his skin, and dabbed his nose again for good measure.

  
The river was grey in the sky’s cloudy reflection, pushing plastic bags and bottles along to the ocean. He set his elbows on the railing and scanned the waterfront, looking over the stones that guided it, stained black over the years, and the trash that stuck to them. It was no park full of cherry trees, he could admit to that, but it also wasn’t trying to pretend it was something it wasn’t. The cherry trees gilded a garbage ridden park full of tourists, and the insincerity of any attempt at redeeming that was overwhelming and pathetic. The grey polluted river looked like a vein through the city that pumped toxic garbage through the streets, killing the world, slowly. He pulled the receipt from his pocket and creased it absentmindedly, feeling as if he was standing less in geography and more in anatomy, gazing into an open wound so deep and so old that it sent the festering smell of infection through the streets. The receipt crinkled under his now deliberate folds, keeping his hands busy and needing not to be seen in order for it to take shape.

  
In the early yawning months of November the sun dipped behind the tall buildings earlier and earlier. Shadows crept across the street, slow and sweeping. Thunder rolled quietly in the distance, despite the uncharacteristically dry day. There would be a storm that night, as if everything that hadn’t fallen during the day had built up for when the night came on. He pinched the receipt once more, and set the origami dog on the railing, red and brown speckled, before the liberated winds kicked up and swept the figure down into the water. It was one more contribution to killing the world, and a killing world it was.

  
As the sun dipped behind the buildings, he walked along Theodore Roosevelt road to the one place he hadn’t passed on his walk through the constellation of clues. He was the only agent who had been to that warehouse before, always alone, always too dazed from the drugs that were meant to help. Wrapping his hand around the tube of trypto, he glanced up at the angry skies whose dark clouds sagged heavily on the horizon, and felt his Agent face far behind him now as the trypto plateaued to a pleasant high. The mask he wore now was as lethal as the drug he took, and he smiled at the repressed sky as he set off for the warehouse.


	8. Chapter 8

The silver phone sat menacingly on the coffee table, closer to Madison than to Ethan. It had been charging for an hour, but Ethan still glared at it making no gesture to demonstrate that he intended to check its content, let alone turn it on. The television buzzed its chatter in the background, all storm warnings about the potential flash floods, falling trees, leaky roofs, and swamping basements. The storm carried greater magnitude than the typical rains, but the warnings and the newscasters’ meticulously dictated manner of speak blended in as being nothing out of the ordinary. Ethan didn’t register a word of it, only stared at the little grey phone that had been the medium in deciding his and Shaun’s fates. The longer he looked at it, the more it seemed to look back at him, and he refused to be the one to blink first.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Madison asked with thick doubt in her voice. Worry tapped her shoulder familiarly as she thought back to the motel and when she had first met him, when he suffered from his recklessness and desperation orchestrated by the Origami Killer. Now that he’d dug up the phone and redirected his focus from finding Shaun to finding the killer, she feared that he was delving into his trauma and dragging it out. The killer was still manipulating him by means of the things he had put him through, a force so strong that Ethan now voluntarily reopened his wounds. Madison urged him to invest his healing process elsewhere. “It’s over, Ethan. There’s nothing left to find.”

“You don't know that,” he said shortly behind his hands, which he had folded into a knot over his mouth. “Something doesn't line up, and if I could find something no one else has,” he pictured a crime scene in his mind riddled with clues and evidence, the kind of things that only an untrained eye and an unconditioned mind could find. The police could close-read the smooth gloved fingerprints all they wanted, but Ethan would look for that one incriminating item left in some unexcavated corner of the scene and that would be the lynchpin detail. “What if I find the Origami Killer?” he pitched, airing his fantasy on whim, only partially aware of the reality or the insanity that propelled it. “Or provide a lead that can help the police? Isn’t that worth looking into? I think whatever detail we’re missing,” he looked to the table before him and the long black cord that traced back to the wall, “it’s going to be in that phone.” 

Madison followed his gaze to the little dead box on the table whose screen only depicted the battery recharging pixel by pixel. The empty battery symbol loaded one bar at a time, starting as a hollow shell before one one block filled a portion of the vessel, two blocks, three blocks, full, before blinking out and starting again. She weighed the odds of the things he had suggested in her head, leaning into and dissecting that ambivalent phrase: what if. He was quick to the “if” but not to the “then,” where a seemingly infinite reservoir of results stretched out before her. If he found the killer, then what? Any answer could follow suit and she futilely worked through a handful of them, but entertaining the various possibilities in her mind couldn’t affect the outcome. “Whenever you’re ready,” she resolved, knowing there was no stopping him, and already preparing herself for whatever it would yield. 

Ethan took a deep breath and repositioned his folded hands in front of his face. “Another minute,” he said quietly and the blinking battery symbol matched his readiness to reopen the raw nerve endings of living as the victim again, if only for a moment.  The bars blinked onto the screen evenly within the battery shape before they all disappeared back to nothing, one, two, three, full, zero. His anxiety mounted and receded. One, two, three, full, zero. He visualised the phone in his hand and taking in its content as he had done not so long ago. One, two, three--

“I have to get it over with,” he decided as he stared at the phone and it stared passively, mockingly back. “I have to know. I have to finish this and… put it all behind me.” He tacked the last phrase on quickly, doubting all over again if that was possible as he tugged the long black cord from its port and held the power button until the screen blinked to life. 

Static exploded in short abrasive bursts, followed by the sizzling sound of bulbous raindrops on cement and metal. The video of an industrial looking building appeared in grainy muted color and zoomed in sadistically on the small, starving, freezing figure trapped below the rebar gate in the floor. 

“Shaun…” Ethan murmured like the word was poised in the back of his throat and then detached on an involuntary impulse.

_ Dad…? _ Shaun called back through the video. The rain pounded fiercely and drowned out any cry that may have followed before the tinny audio thinned into spotty bursts and the screen went to black. A string of underscores perforated the darkness and the final clue flickered to life, filling the blanks with a cryptic, ominous spattering of letters. 

The two gazed over the address in an emotional aura as delicate as the silence shared between them. Ethan radiated heartache. Madison’s sympathy punctured her focus. She pulled her black book out reverently and copied the address down, then put her chin in her hand and glanced back and forth from the phone to Ethan’s face, considering both the logistical and emotional ways she wanted to help him, and knowing that one would affect the other. 

“That…” she started, trying to find a medium, “that was a doozy.”

“I forgot about that part,” he said hollowly. His white knuckles framed the phone and he rubbed his thumb consolingly over the smooth ridges and divots in the keypad. His tone didn’t read with the same grief that he had been carrying. Something brokenly determined sounded from the shadow of his words that emphasised his burning drive to catch the killer. He felt the vacancy where a piece of him had died with Shaun, only this time it had not doused the embers, but fanned them, and the heat brought a vivacity to him that he hadn’t felt in weeks. 

Madison kept her eyes down so as not to pry at Ethan and the inner workings of his mind as the two of them milled the content of the video over. She reread the copied information and perused pages of her notebook, trying to scratch in the missing blanks as best she could. Old articles flipped by in her personal archive of the city’s history with casual nonchalance. The worst parts of living there were at the tips of her fingers as she turned one story after the other. 

Ethan kept his eyes on the address until it blinked out, only to be replaced but the solid black screen once more. He turned the phone over in his hand as if it would provide any more information before he looked to Madison. “Any ideas on where to go from here?”

She continued to turn the pages of her black notebook thoughtfully, nonchalantly researching as much as she was keeping her hands busy. “I worked a story a couple of months ago down by the river. That’s the only place I’ve seen that kind of building. It looks like it used to be some kind of docking place from back in the day. They’re all abandoned now, or repurposed.” She kept her thumb on the page as she met his look. “Have you brought this up to the police?” 

Ethan shook his head gently. “You saw the blackmail,” he said somberly. “Doing it all alone was the only chance I had. I want to finish this the way...” his voice died off in his throat, “the way it was meant to be done.” He set the silver phone dejectedly back on the coffee table and rubbed his face with one hand. “You said it’s by the river?”

“Yeah, Theodore Roosevelt Road is the only place that I know of that would have that type of building, but--”

She hadn’t finished her sentence when Ethan stood and picked his coat up from off the seat, pulling one arm through the thick black sleeve. He turned as if he was going to say something to her, but froze when he saw the look on her face. His own assumed one of innocent curiosity. “What?” 

“You’re planning on going there now?” She asked, wondering what logic was supporting his decision or if he had regressed to blindly jumping through the killer’s hoops. “Weather reports are predicting a storm.”

“Yeah,” he replied plainly, sounding surprised that Madison had a different point of view. He slid the other sleeve on hesitantly and with more reservation, gesturing towards the TV screen with the floppy, unfilled cuff. “I don’t want to lose any evidence to it.” 

“Kind of dangerous to drive,” she noted.

Ethan almost laughed. “I’ve done worse.”

“Can’t you go when it’s over?” she urged. His adamancy was twisting itself into its regressive, self-sacrificial tendency and put a pit in her stomach. “Take your time and process a little before you launch into this?”

“I don’t want to lose any evidence to it,” he repeated, convincing himself that there was more to be found and done than he knew to be true. He just had to find the right clue, he thought, it was as easy as a daydream.

Madison laughed lightly, as skeptical as a journalist. “What evidence?”

“ _ Any _ evidence,” he pressed, zipping up his jacket and checking his pockets for his keys, phone, and anything else he might need for his upcoming independent investigation. “Look,” he started patiently, “I’m not asking you to go through all this with me, or support me, or do anything for me. Everything you’ve helped me with so far has been your choice and for that I’m truly grateful.” His voice inflected upwards as he choice his next words carefully. “If I could ask one thing of you it would be that you understand I have to do this. I have to. You saw that video.” He walked to the table and lifted the phone, turning it in his hand once before placing it in his pocket. “ _ Anything _ I can do to try and find the killer – my son’s killer – is worth it.” He said finally, and considered exactly to what extent “it” was. Finding the killer was worth resigning the case to the police. It was worth a lack of closure. It was worth killing for. It was worth dying for; it’s not like he had anything more to lose. He felt his pockets over again and looked around the room. “Madison, do you know where my gun is?”

Madison thought for a moment, trying to recall the last place she had seen it, or heard him talk about it. “You used it to kill Brad Silver last, right? If it’s not in your car, Jayden must have taken it after your demonstration at the funeral.”

“Of course he did,” Ethan sighed bitterly, “and I bet you told him it was there.” He cocked a smirk in the corner of his mouth while his eyes held a jaded, shallow look. “Am I wrong, Guardian Angel?” 

Madison returned his look and held her ground, admitting to the unchangeable trait she had acquired in her childhood. “Can you really say you were in the right state of mind to carry a gun?” She asked, defensiveness swelling in her chest. “And anyway, you’re investigating an abandoned building. What would you need a gun for?”

“If the killer’s there,” he said matter-of-factly. “Or Blake, if he’s off his suspension, or to shoot a lock, or…” and the more instances he tried to come up with, the more foolish he felt, and Madison’s raised eyebrows confirmed it. “Forget it, you’re right. I’ll be fine without it. I’m going to get going before the weather picks up.” He placed his hand on the doorknob and opened the door just a sliver when another thought came to mind and he added over his shoulder, “I’ll call you if I need you or when everything is clear.”

“I feel like those are--” the sound of the door closing behind Ethan punctuated her sentence before she could finish it. “Two very different things,” she said to herself with tight lips. She rose from her seat, shaking her head to herself, but a smile crept its way to the corner of her mouth as worry and relief collided within her. He’s a firecracker, she thought to herself, watching him fall into his old destructive habits. He was as hell-bent as they day they met, and she couldn’t help but feel that she was gaining him back as quickly as he was losing him. An eerie nostalgia swept her as she had watched the man she had met at the motel close the door behind him with a fiery spirit growing brighter, burning him up. As she rolled the charger into neat, palm-sized loops she could have sworn she smelled smoke. 


	9. Chapter 9

The river carried peals of thunder from the distant heavens to the squalorous city on its rushing, rising, grey-brown tide. The warehouse loomed, skirted by runoff, and the roof reached its open metal hands to the angry sky, welcoming wrath.

Ethan’s car lumbered up to its destination with the sticky sound of water peeling away from slick pavement. He hadn’t looked out the window at any point during the drive, only at the GPS as the little blue line between the white triangle and the red target got shorter and shorter until they hovered over each other. He stuffed his emotions into a shoebox and locked them away, staring down that little target before he turned to face it in real life. He shut his eyes and tried to access that black and white space he could only see during his blackouts, concentrating to no avail, and then trying relax to no avail. The hairline cracks in his heart extended spindly webs further under the duct tape and thumb tacks that held him together. “I’m here, Shaun,” he whispered to himself and beyond, expecting to feel his spirit in the place where he had died. “I’m here, son,” he prayed, and, after a while, heard only silence.

He squeezed his eyes closed tighter and tighter with each gruelling, guilt-ridden moment that scraped by until he had no choice, opened his eyes, and embraced the solitude he had brought upon himself. Before him he saw the dismal derelict warehouse weeping in the oncoming storm, with its heavy doors open in a stiff frozen scream, a gasp, a mouth wide and crying out like the faces of all those dead victims. The wipers beat evenly on the windshield, until a turn of the key arrested their motion with one final lurch before settling into stillness.

Ethan put his collar up and ducked out into the rain, skidding over the slick pavement and into the mouth of the large grey corpse. Inside was desolate and hollow, safe for the scraps of wood and rebar that littered floor. A thick, silty layer of dampened dust displayed the same pair of shoes crossing back and forth to the same spot. Ethan followed the footsteps carefully across the smooth cement floors and rough makeshift bridges to the well in the center of the room, whose rebar lid stretched backwards and the rain from the open roof bulleted violently down into it. The brim of the water rippled gently over the edge as each new drop disturbed what otherwise would be a placid surface.

He walked to the ledge and glanced reluctantly down into the foggy grey water that lapped innocently at his feet. Distractedly, he scouted the room from its center point out the far reaches of each corner, refusing to gaze any longer into the depths of the dark, cloudy water, lest the face of his son or any of the other boys needlessly murdered arise from its depths. He shivered from the cold of the rain and the haunting feeling that the warehouse emanated, and that despite the silence that surrounded him, he didn’t feel alone. He looked into the well again and considered the nine lives taken, but the reverent hollow feeling of the well didn’t match the itching paranoia that clawed at the back of his neck. 

“I think it’s peaceful,” a distant voice chimed. The light, casual tone rang to each corner of the warehouse like the voice of a god speaking from beyond. 

Ethan turned to source the voice, but the echoey expanse of the room reverberated it with an unlocatable omnipresence. He scoured each corner, turning in place and thoroughly sweeping the room for any sign of movement, any indication that his fears were confirmed.

“It’s like a graveyard except the bodies aren’t here.” The voice continued. “Apparently drowning is one of the nicer ways to go. I don't know who could say, though. They weren’t very talkative when I came to pull them out.”

The longer sentences allowed Ethan to triangulate the source of the voice. He stopped turning, narrowing down every shadowed cranny and cleft in the building, when he saw a crimson smear against a wooden crate. Through the obscuring unlit stage of the warehouse, Ethan distinguished a figure wore a loosened tie, a red velvet jacket, and sweet lipstick prints that covered his hands and smattered his face from the eyebrows down. He walked towards the figure with his defenses high, expecting encounter another one of the killer’s traps. He approached cautiously, expecting him to speak again as he drew nearer and nearer. The red smear took a familiar form, like bait on a hook, teasing him with comfort before the inevitable danger struck. 

“Ethan,” Norman said lightly. “Thank God you’re here.”

“Holy shit, Norman.” Ethan hurried towards him, neglecting his own defensiveness with a paternal protectiveness he thought he’d forgotten. “What happened to you-- did the killer do this to you?”

Norman looked up slowly with lost eyes and a stained smile, and slowly drew the word “yes.”

“Yeah,” Ethan concurred absently. He swept the room again for the killer and found nothing. The danger was not all around him, but right in front of him as Norman slouched against the wall, blood running thickly from his eyes, his nose, his lips. The priority was clear. “We have to get you fixed up,” he decided. “Can you walk?”

Norman held his frozen smile and shook his head. “You can’t face him without me.”

“Norman, please,” he implored. “I don’t want you to get caught in the collateral if you can’t walk. Come on, take my hand. We’re gonna get out of here,” he said so kindly, that Norman’s fragile mind snapped under the weight of Ethan’s unconditional altruism.

Norman placed his fingers in Ethan’s palm and gripped it with a vivacity that betrayed his outward appearance. He tugged forcefully on the hand that had been extended to him and Ethan fell forward onto the floor, looking into his running red eyes. 

“You can’t face him without me,” Norman smiled vacantly, “because he’s right here.” He squeezed Ethan’s palm and rubbed the back of his hand with his thumb, his voice dropping to a whisper, oozing with pride. “He’s right here.”

Ethan’s eyes hardened and he instinctively pulled his hand away, the pilot light within him popped and flared. There was no hope to smother it and he felt himself distanced from his body, floating in that apathetic space above his head where the world washed to grey. “You,” he said in a low, threatening voice. “You killed Shaun?”

Norman nodded shallowly, wearily, as his smile persisted frozen on his face. “You should have seen how he looked when I told him you weren’t coming--”

Ethan grabbed Norman’s lapels and threw him back against the wall, blood both fresh and half-dried squelched between his fingers, running over his knuckles. “If this is a joke it’s a fucking sick one,” he growled. “Tell me you’re lying.”

“Oh, Ethan,” he smiled, too numb to feel his head snap back again with a crack that filled the entirety of the vacant room. No revocation followed, only a sinister, proud unwavering smile.  

Ethan's eyes were foggy mirrors as his face contorted with grief. He gritted his teeth and choked on a scream. “Tell me you’re lying!”

Norman only laughed a low, insidious chuckle as his head hung down, chin tucked against his chest. He looked up slowly and met Ethan’s eyes, basking in the product of his work, in the gritty scream, in the pearls that formed along his waterline. “I wouldn’t lie to you, not after everything I put you through. I said drive into oncoming traffic, I meant it...” his chuckle crescendoed into unhinged laughter. “And you did it! You did all of it except escape the police, but I don’t blame you. Hopping along that railing must be difficult with those broken ribs.” He sighed vocally and coughed a palmful of blood into his fist. He opened it to reveal the tube of trypto and looked at it lovingly. 

“I’ll kill you for this,” Ethan quavered, repeating it to himself faster and faster and the little flame spread into a burning fire. “I’ll kill you for this. I’ll kill you for this. I’ll kill you for this. I’ll kill you for this.”

Norman took a long, savoring whiff of the trypto. Glistening blue leaked out in an explosive new river of red. “Go ahead,” he coaxed. “Show me what I’ve taught you.”

Ethan stood up and paced across the open floor of the warehouse, turning away from Norman’s vacant stare. A distant growl swelled overhead, the sound pouring in from the gaping ceiling along with the rain and the bursts of sporadic light. It was the sound of the world tearing apart as the fissures of lightning revealed its aching seams. He looked to the buckling sky and weighed his options. Sooner or later the repressed would come and collect its dues. He heard Norman rise to his feet and struggle to regain his balance. Ethan felt, now, more than ever, like a dead man walking. “Shaun, if you’re here,” he mouthed to himself. “Look away, son.”

Norman stumbled through numbness and the thick fog that occupied his mind and approached Ethan slowly. “I don’t remember it, you know,” he tried innocently, as if the testimony would acquit him. He pulled the trypto out of his pocket and dusted the excess off his hands. “Really, they say this stuff is supposed to help.” The blue coating on his palms blotted to red as he brushed them against his jacket. “But when I’m left to my own devices, I go fucking insane. It’s not my fault those kids died--”

Ethan swung around and pushed Norman away with a force that he himself didn’t know the full strength of. He looked at his hands and found them stained and shaking, gripping them tightly into fists as if he could hold on to the remaining scorched bits of himself and prevent himself from granting a fate to man who deserved it the most. 

Norman staggered back, laughing to himself. “All you had to do was find him in time. I gave you everything you needed. Tell me it wasn’t just a little fun to play detective.”

Ethan lurched forward and snatched the tube of trypto, throwing it across the room. “You took everything from me!” He yelled, inkling remnants of himself charred and crumbled away as a hollow inhumanity took its place. He took steps towards him, dangerous impulsivity taking over as the flames flared fiercely and burnt him beyond recognition.

The torrents fell through the hole in the ceiling with an incomparable ferocity. The pounding of the rain silenced the shatter of the trypto. Ethan stood so close to the skylight, the murder weapon, he could feel the spray of it on his face as it ricocheted off corrugated metal.

Norman took Ethan’s shirt in tight fists and held onto it imploringly. “It was the drugs,” he explained lightly. Desperation for acquittal mounted rapidly. “I wasn’t myself. I’m sure you can understand with your little blackouts, can’t you?” 

Ethan pushed him back again with vehement disgust. “Your fucking junkie habits should have taken your life nine times over,” he growled. "Not my son’s or anyone else’s.” He pushed him forward again, fighting himself and how good it felt to indulge in violence. He felt his fists tighten, readying himself to start throwing punches. Norman staggered violently and struggled to regain his balance. He put his arms out, grasping for anything to steady himself with and finding nothing. He stumbled to the side, ankles crossed, and fell elbow-first into the well. The grey cloudy water filled his eyes and nose as he followed exhaled bubbles back up to the surface. He had hardly gasped in fresh air when Ethan kicked him back under. 

He sputtered the dirty water from his mouth and puffed his cheeks with air to be sure he wouldn’t breathe it in. The blunt force accelerated his dizzy, disoriented, drug-induced haze as he turned and pushed his way through the well water, trying to find the surface. He reached his hands out, feeling slick slimy walls that festered with constant damp growths and followed it up to the light. His fingers graced the rebar lid before his face had surfaced. Inches remained between the cage that covered the well and the water that rose by the minute. 

“Ethan,” He begged, pushing his face up between the bars of the grate. The water lapped and filled his bleeding eyes, washing them clean if only briefly. “Ethan, you can’t let me die here! I know, I know I made you kill before, but--” he gasped the fleeting air and spat the words out with the water. “You’re not a killer!”

“I’m not a killer,” Ethan sneered. “I’m not myself right now. The police have all the information they need to find you. They just have to do it in time.”

His knit brow pressed upwards and tense little dots dimpled his chin. He wore lamentful, pained look as he gazed into the well, whose surface thrashed violently. He placed his red hands in his coat pockets and turned around, forcing all expression from his face as he walked slowly across the grey silty floor, out of the corpses mouth, and under the crying sky. The city lights reflected orange on the cloud ceiling. Thunder rolled gutturally from beyond. 

“Ethan!” Norman screamed, resisting the rising water with less and less avail. His voice reverberated through the warehouse on the old abandoned block. The only person around to hear stood on the gravel lot with his eyes on the polluted heavens. “Ethan!" The protests grew garbled. Thunder rolled again, drowning out the beggings for mercy not to be received. 

Ethan pulled his sober hands from his pockets and crouched beside his car. He folded his hands and rubbed them together absently with this face by his knees. Reaching down, he scooped a palmful of water from behind his tires and rubbed the muddy water between his hands until the red-brown mixture dripped dry, and he palmed the water over and over until nothing was left. He took the phone from his pocket and dropped it in the puddle, pressing it into the dirt with his heel, before he got in the car and pulled away. 

Lightning waved for his attention and he paid it nothing more than a glance. Thunder called a bassy, cosmic wail that was heard and not listened to. His eyes watered but he felt nothing, and he coughed once in the freezing November air that filled his car. A cloud formed off his lips, quietly smoky before his face, before it dispersed into the air as quickly as it had come, leaving no trace that it was ever there to begin with. 


	10. Chapter 10

The door opened slowly as Ethan slunk in, rain-soaked and emotionless. He set his jacket on the coat hook by the door and the water dripped from the hem, creating a sad spreading puddle on the floor. 

His thoughts berated him ceaselessly, and his apathetic façade broke down with each moment that passed. The fragile and exposed nerve endings had tied themselves in knots, inflamed and swollen and throbbing painfully with every breath he took, with every beat of his heart. He stood in the foyer and felt his weight pressed into his soles, felt his ribs expand and compress with his diaphragm, felt that he was functioning at the bare minimum, that he was living, and that was more than others could say. He looked to a framed picture of Shaun on the wall and expected a smile to twinge at the corner of his mouth. None came. “I don’t know if you’d be proud,” he confessed aloud to himself. “I hope you’re not ashamed of me for what I’ve done.” 

Shaun’s young face gazed back, unmoving, open to interpretation. There will be no more victims, Ethan decided with bittersweet reprieve. The last one was taken tonight. 

He walked to the landline and dialled Madison. The phone rang once before clicking to life. 

“So which is it?” She asked, as soon as she picked up. “Everything fine, or do you need me?”

Ethan hesitated, thinking for a moment, wincing with each word that passed through his head. “Everything is fine,” he answered finally, and broke the silence before it broke him.

“Did you get to the warehouse and back?” She asked like a journalist, starting with the facts. 

Professional, Ethan noted, and it was easy enough to answer “yes.”

“Did you find anything there?” She pressed, eagerness growing in her disembodied voice, itching for the story. 

A moment passed. Different levels of truth floated before him, some too raw to speak aloud, others so vague it felt more honest to lie. “Closure,” he replied simply, and it was as truthful as he could speak without shaking. “Just closure.”

Her digitized voice had begun to say something else, but he set the phone back on the hook absently without hearing a word. Lightning lit the room with white electricity as he slid the burnt and bloodied blue sweater off scarred body. The trash bins outside were flooded with rainwater, and he smiled nostalgically as he placed the sweater in the garbage. It took on water quickly as it bubbled up through the holes and lilted peacefully to the bottom. Placing the lid on half way, the stormwater drummed nonchalantly on the plastic can and the water inside filled slowly, slowly, even after he had gone inside. 


End file.
